60 years married: a story of love, service and bringing Kerry Packer back to life

IN a quiet corner of Medowie, Bill and Margaret Taylor are preparing to celebrate a diamond milestone. 

Their 60-year marriage is a story woven with devotion to each other, their family, and to people like media tycoon Kerry Packer, who was among the many they saved on the frontline of emergency service.

Married young, their life together began at full pace.

Raising three children early meant busy days, tight routines, and a shared sense of purpose that quietly laid the foundation for something extraordinary.

Now, with a family that stretches to eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, their legacy is as expansive as it is grounded.

Bill’s career reads like a catalogue of courage.

A retired Intensive Care Paramedic with more than 30 years of service, he worked across rescue, coordination, motorcycle rapid response and as an instructor at the ambulance academy.

Among his many achievements, one very public moment stands out: being the paramedic who helped save one of Australia’s richest and most powerful men, Kerry Packer.

In 1990, Bill was called to the polo game where Packer suffered a sudden cardiac arrest.

“On the day of the event my partner and I were in the Liverpool area [when] we heard from a general duty ambulance crew that a rider had fallen from his horse, unconscious, at the polo,” Bill told News Of The Area.

“As we were the only intensive care crew in the area… we were despatched to the scene.

“On arrival, we observed that CPR was being carried out on a person on the ground.

“We immediately took over treatment.

“My partner Stan intubated the patient and placed an endotracheal tube into his lungs and proceeded to ventilate him.  “I placed the monitor leads on his chest and determined that his heart was stopped and in fibrillation.

“I immediately charged up the defibrillator and gave him an initial shock, which converted his heart to ventricular tachycardia.

“After finding a vein in his neck, I then gave him a drug to settle his heart down, which it did.

“At this stage we didn’t know who our patient was as we were busy.”

Bill said that when Stan asked the crowd who the patient was, he suddenly realised that the tall person standing beside them was James Packer.

The sky was also full of media helicopters.

“He [Kerry Packer] was semi-conscious and breathing on the way to Liverpool and fighting the tube in his throat  – later to be transferred to St Vincents in Sydney.”

The early defibrillation Bill provided was life-saving, prompting Packer to fund the installation of defibrillators in all NSW ambulances.

Vital role

For Bill, it’s not the high-profile cases that define his career.

It’s the countless everyday lives saved, the patients he later visited in hospital, and the heartfelt letters of thanks that followed him home.

Margaret’s role was equally vital.

As an Ambulance Emergency Call Taker, she was the calm voice on the other end of chaos – guiding distressed people through moments of fear and urgency.

While Bill was on the road, Margaret was often the first point of contact, holding space for panic and pain with a steady, reassuring presence.

Together, they formed a partnership built on a simple and powerful principle: nothing stays bottled up.

“We’ve never had an argument,” Bill says. “And we’ve never kept anything back.”

It’s a statement that might sound improbable until you understand the world they lived in.

Trauma, crisis, life-and-death decisions, these were daily realities.

Instead of letting it fracture them, they made it a practice to talk through everything.

Coming home in a blood-stained uniform wasn’t a moment of shock, it was routine.

Margaret would calmly put the clothes aside for a separate wash, and then they would sit down and talk through what had happened.

That openness became their safeguard.

“Talking about it, no matter how difficult, allowed us to move on,” Bill explains.

“None of us, not even the kids, have experienced PTSD.

“We’ve always been able to speak freely.”

Their home was one of honesty, resilience, and understanding, qualities that extended beyond their immediate family into a wide circle of lifelong friends from the emergency services.

Gatherings are filled with shared stories, deep understanding, and the kind of humour only those who’ve walked similar paths can appreciate.

“There’s a lot of black humour,” Bill admits with a smile.

“But it’s how we’ve coped and how we’ve stayed connected.”

After retiring from the ambulance service at Tanilba Bay, Bill’s sense of adventure didn’t slow.

He went on to work as a remote paramedic on ships, oil rigs and mining sites across the globe, while also volunteering for a decade with the Medowie Rural Fire Brigade.

Through it all, Margaret remained his steady anchor: calm, composed, and unwavering both at work and at home.

When asked the secret to 60 years together, their answer isn’t complicated but it is rare – understanding, communication and facing everything side by side.

By Jacie WHITFIELD